


Antitwilight

by BlueDarknessIceHeart



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Fluff and Angst, Memory Loss, Past Lives, Past Relationship(s), Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers, Recovered Memories, Relationship Issues, Souls, Trauma, WoL Already Has Memories, WoL is ahead of the curve and done with everyone's shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29506365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueDarknessIceHeart/pseuds/BlueDarknessIceHeart
Summary: an·ti·twi·light | \ ˈantē¦-, -tə̇- \ : the pink or purplish glow in the eastern sky after sunsetIf not for the hit that landed, she never would’ve raised her blade. She would have sooner thrown herself on the edge of it than run him through with it.His voice rattles the floor under her feet.“How dare you claim to love what you don’t know when you can’t remember your own name!”She snaps at him, all bared teeth and wildfire in her golden eyes, her voice wracked with rage like he’d forgotten it instead.
Relationships: Azem/Emet-Selch (Final Fantasy XIV), Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is really just a collection of scenes I jot down on my second? playthrough of SHB. Roughly connected, split up in the way that made the most sense to me.

Emet-Selch watched the vaunted Warrior of Light remove her helmet - something so simple for someone like her - and yet something about it lit a small flame somewhere in his soul. He could see the freckles across her cheeks, the silver lining her hair and bright, bright gold eyes. 

Gold eyes that were achingly familiar when they flicked towards where he was, where he actually was, and not the stand-in he had waiting to make his little approach. 

Emet-Selch saw the Warrior of Light, Ascian slayer, cock her hip and trap her helmet between it and her wrist and he swore, her soul sliced through with amber-like veins. He snuffed the hope out with a little too much ease - a broken unfulfilled thing was all he was looking at, and he was but an old fool with too many memories.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

Nalia Lacoste was the only one who didn’t bristle at his presence, those gold eyes of hers too akin to his own as she watched him. She was all curiosity and tilted head, even whipping around to scold the little hyur male with her.

Gold eyes studied him, saw the slope of his shoulders and something in her keened with a sadness she’d only felt in glimpses of memories and dreams that didn’t quite feel like her own. She studied, and took to trailing after him like a lost dog. 

He is lingering in the shadows when the Warrior of Darkness and her companions file into the Ocular. Everyone is bickering around her and about him, but their supposed beacon in everything remains deafeningly silent. 

It is the sharp noise of her clapping her hands together once, the spike-like adornments on her gauntlets clinking together with the movement that breaks the chaotic swell of sound. There is something in her eyes that resembles his lost love’s quiet ferocity, something sharp under the smile. 

The irony of the sun wielding darkness, stepping into the abyss, dripping in inky black from her hair to her armor isn’t lost on him. 

“You cannot truly mean to defend him - the _Ascian?_ ”

The hyur is the one to speak - Thancred, he thinks - incredulity written on his face for all to see. 

“I am. You truly see him as an active threat? Elidibus had done nothing but try to talk with me until, well,” she twirls a finger in a tilted oval in front of her, roughly mirroring a line wrapped around her from shoulder to hip. 

“We all remember your encounters with Zenos, and Zenos being puppeted about by Elidibus, Warrior.” 

Alisaie speaks like she doesn’t want to be reminded of what happened in their absence, and Emet-Selch watches the Warrior draw herself up a little straighter, tension cording through her shoulders in an instant. 

“Alisaie has a point, we all heard or saw what happened, and you would trust that monsters great-grandsire?”

Her golden gaze shifts to Thancred, and Emet-Selch is almost impressed at the anger in her eyes. 

“I refuse to fault Zenos for the circumstances of his birth, and I refuse to align the sins of one as the sins of the other. They share blood, that means very very little to me, Thancred.”

Her voice is as cold as the steel she carries, telling him she spoke her truth with far more behind it than he knew. 

“You fear him on the basis that he’s an Ascian because of what happened with Lahabrea. I don’t fault you for that, but I will not let you clasp your hands over your ears and close your eyes at the idea that our counterparts in this are more than things that go bump in the night. You see Emet-Selch as nothing more than a hidden dagger or the would-be poison in a goblet - I look at him and see a man carrying more than anyone should be allowed to on their own; whether they be painful memories or sins unatoned for is not for me to call before knowing.”

The man himself doesn’t like how quickly and easily she could read him, how those golden eyes had traced the slope of his shoulders and the curve of his spine and seen a weight too heavy instead of indifference. She sees him carrying the weight of the star on his shoulders and wishes she could help carry the burden, and she cannot find a reason why.


	2. Chapter 2

The Warrior of Light was filled with more questions than he had anticipated. She never balked at his sarcasm and sharp tongue, simply grinning and returning the favour - she always paid attention when he answered her, those bright eyes filled with curiosity and unwavering in the way she gave him her attention. 

He truly saw too many shared similarities, the same tiny actions from the past that flitted through his dreams and his memories, and he could not let the two mix in his mind more than they already had.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

It is after Y’shtola is plucked from the lifestream once more, when he couldn’t stand the sadness that rolled off of Nalia in waves that sang of familiarity in the worst of ways, that Emet-Selch stumbles upon her sprawled out in blue flowers. She is half asleep and rid of most of her armor, opening one eye to look up at him.

She pats the spot next to her, shifting enough to give him room to join her without invading too much of his space. He waits, watches, considers how easily this woman has accepted his presence and his words - and he settles down onto the ground next to her. 

Somewhere between their calm quiet, gentle dozing and contentment neither of them were familiar with - one unfamiliar with it after so long, and one that’d never had it until now. He wakes fully before she does to find the elezen woman tucked tightly against his side, the most relaxed he’s ever seen her in even just his brief time watching.

He pretends he doesn’t hear her sigh his true name like it’s a long-awaited homecoming while she nuzzles further into his clothes.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

They do not speak about the things that happen between them out of the Scions' earshot and eyesight. The stolen touches and soft conversations, the quiet humming of songs he remembers and she doesn't despite her being the one with the tune in her head. It is suffering in a way he hadn't expected, couldn't have prepared for - battling his own sight and heart with the logic and feeling behind seeing his love trapped in something broken and incomplete. An unfulfilled purpose, dreams shattered before they were truly formed, ethereal strings wrapped around the elezen woman's limbs without her ever truly knowing they were there. 

At least, he thought she'd be unaware of her past. 

It's in those stolen moments that he learns she's haunted by flame and voices she cannot place, that his presence makes her soul keen with something sad and lost that she cannot - does not - want to place now if ever, considering their current alignments. She takes his shared knowledge in stride, and he gets to watch her eyes widen ever so slightly when something clicks, when something he says whisks more of the fog from her memories. 

He wishes she'd never whispered how pretty the purple of his soul was into his hair when she thought he was asleep, that he didn't feel so compelled to fix everything if it'd get him his Azem back-

Moonstruck foolishness, is what it was. He knew that, could hear Lahabrea laughing at him even now for always letting the spitfire woman that became the Fourteenth monopolize his attention. 

He still could not bring himself to regret it in the moment, despite the bitter taste it left in his mouth. This Warrior of Light and Darkness was not his, was not his long lost Azem, was nothing more than a broken servant of Hydaelyn.


	3. Chapter 3

She has changed, in the time he’s awaited the shuffling incomplete thing that he thought held Azem’s soul to appear in Amaurot. She’d known before setting foot here that she was different, something about the way she was so put together in her original forms image. 

Her hair has lost its inky colour, shot through with white and he swears he can see the tinge of red towards her roots. A trick of the light, nothing more than the flames licking up the walls behind him. 

The sunset orange of her soul could not be true, and even if it was this was not his love. His chest should not ache at the clear tracks of tears across dirtied cheeks, the darkness around her eyes should not sting so much. 

She calls his name when he turns his back on them, something soft he isn’t deserving of, something riddled with the anguish she can feel rolling off of him in waves big enough to drown her. 

He doesn’t look back, and she tears through the fall of Amaurot with pain coiled so tightly between her ribs that what would’ve been a war cry at the chthonic creature before her sounded more akin to the wail of someone wracked with grief and rage. 

The light lashes out at everything around her, she is on her knees and trying to grab Alisaie before she can do something foolish, and it takes them both far too long to realize it is her screaming like her own child had fallen dead before her. Nalia hears his every word, feels the ivory that lances through her more so than any dragon’s claws or Thordin’s lies, Haurchefant’s shattered shield or Zenos’ blade through her body. She knows the shattering sound she hears is her soul coming apart at the seams, that she is being unmade in a way she shouldn’t be - not again.

She forces herself up, the slow shuffle of armored feet takes her straight to him. He doesn’t stop her, doesn’t grab her wrist until she’s placed a bare palm against his cheek. Doesn’t realize what she is saying until she is swaying into him from the pain. 

“Hades, would you truly kill me twice?” 

She sees the flicker of G’raha Tia behind him before he shoves her away, his voice rising in volume despite the snarl to his tone. 

“You will never be her! You are but a mere imitation, unfit to claim her name!” 

The Warrior of Light and Darkness smiles at him all the same, and he can see Azem in her place, the same soft smile of someone who knew better, of someone that cared differently than the rest. 

He sees the smile she gave him when she abdicated her seat in the lead up to the final days, when she had run fingers through his hair and told him there had to be a way that did not have such a high cost on all sides. 

Nalia Lacoste stands back up amidst blinding white, and the faded colour of her soul roars back into its brilliance before his eyes. Her figure is replaced by that of Azem, he could reach out and trace the edges of her mask-

Emet-Selch snaps himself from his admiration with a jolt. An imitation, a mockery, his sins come back to pluck his heart from his chest one more time.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

She hisses and spits and swears the entire time they are bickering. She is hauled to the battlefield to face Hades, to bask in the brilliance of the bright purple she can only see shreds of.

He pays no mind to the tears on her face, the desperation in her tone. He does not want to believe the tricks played on him by his own eyes. 

“Hades, please!” 

She moves with the same grace Azem did, twists out of the way of his blow before it can come close to landing. 

“My love, do not make me do this!” 

If not for the hit that landed, she never would’ve raised her blade. She would have sooner thrown herself on the edge of it than run him through with it. 

His voice rattles the floor under her feet.

“How dare you claim to love what you don’t know when you can’t remember your own name!” 

She snaps at him, all bared teeth and wildfire in her golden eyes, her voice wracked with rage like he’d forgotten it instead. 

“Persephone!” 

She knows there is more to her name, that there are things she’s missing still, that she only really remembers the end in red and white and a peace undone by the star itself. She remembers the feeling of creating something between her fingers, of throwing herself into battles others could not fight even before the world fell apart, before she was sundered. 

She remembers so much, yet so, so little. 

The memories that have haunted her every step all her life spill from her lips like the white ichor that still fills the cracks in her lips, that stains her skin more efficiently than blood ever has. 

She remembers their first kiss much like how she remembers the first solar eclipse, remembers the antitwilight bleed of purple into orange when their souls first found each other, the crackle of aether between their fingers, Lahabrea’s singed hair after a concept gone awry, Hythlodeus giving them both over-enthusiastic speeches to confess to the other before he did it for them-

The world coming apart before her eyes, their final kiss goodbye, the fighting with Elidibus, Lahabrea, and him that led to her departure, the final sparks of her life bid to do something that she still cannot grasp but the pain of it rakes through her ribs much like the light aether coursing through her veins. 

Nalia is knocked from her trance with a blow to her side, the scrape of her armor against the floor louder than the ringing in her ears. 

She almost flings herself between Thancred and Hades, cannot will her body to move fast enough to escape the white haze that fills her vision, she cannot bear the sad smile Ardbert gives her when he takes her hand in his to help her make the movement she couldn’t.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

She is bruised and bloodied, bare palms cupping Hades’ cheeks as he asks her to remember them, her whole body shaking with the force of her sobs.

“Why must you force my hand every time, Hades? What have I done to be made to bear your blood on my hands twice over?”

Nalia can see tears well in his eyes, a surprisingly steady hand lifting to wipe tears from her cheek before lifting one of her curls between his fingers.

The red-orange of it widens her eyes, and before she can pose another question his lips are pressed all-too briefly against her forehead and he is vanishing between her fingers. 

The purple never fades from her eyesight, a standout amidst the medley of colours that mark the Scions’ souls, and she cannot help but wonder if it is the looming reminder of a bond permanently out of reach or if her Hades is still twice as clever than she'd thought.


End file.
